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Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931

"English Prose A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice"

I believe that what I have merely hinted
to you is capable of a much richer development than I have here given to
these thoughts. I believe, in brief, that in our loyalties we find our
best sources of a genuinely religious insight.
Men have often said, "The true source of religious insight is
revelation; for these matters are above the powers of human reason."
Now, I am not here to discuss or to criticize anybody's type of
revelation. But this I know, and this the believers in various supposed
revelations have often admitted--that unless the aid of some interior
spiritual insight comes to be added to the merely external revelation,
one can be left in doubt by all possible signs and wonders whereby the
revelation undertakes to give us convincing external evidence. Religious
faith, indeed, relates to that which is above us, but it must arise from
that which is within us. And any faith which has indeed a worthy
religious object is either merely a mystic ecstasy, which must then be
judged, if at all, only by its fruits, or else it is a loyalty, which
never exists without seeking to bear fruit in works.


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